Well, at least they weren't playing Ted Nugent when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strode onstage Thursday at the CPAC convention brandishing a long-barreled gun. The firearm was ostensibly a gift for retiring U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, for his years of service to country, but the big-haired, head-banging notes of Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" that accompanied Mr. McConnell's Sergio Leone moment told perhaps too much of another story:

The senior senator from Kentucky, struggling in recent polls and facing a scrappy, hard-right GOP primary opponent (see Matt Bevin's op-ed, below) and - should Mr. McConnell survive that matchup - a well-funded and up-in-the-polls general election Democrat in the form of Alison Lundergan Grimes, needs all the firepower he can muster in this election year.

Forum Flashes wasn't in the audience when Mr. McConnell made his CPAC appearance in Maryland, but we watched a Politico-posted video of his presentation and his speech, and the gun moment was as good as it got, audience-reception-wise. Maybe there was something wrong with the sound recording, but even the senator's red-meat mentions of Obamacare, socialism and Benghazi seemed to draw only tepid smatterings of applause from the ultra-conservative crowd.

If Mr. McConnell didn't seem entirely convincing in carrying the gun (a helmeted Michael Dukakis in a tank, comes to mind) neither did the senator's everyman references to Denny's and the travails of the poor. Especially jarring was his reference to the rich getting richer under President Obama. It didn't take his Democratic opponent long to unload newspaper reports that had Mr. McConnell's estimated wealth at $27.2 million in 2010 and that it increased 786 percent since 2004, all the while he represented a poor state and voted against raising the minimum wage.